The Assorted Artwork of John DiBiase

Marty McFly – via Marker

Early 2011, I started getting into trying new art projects. I invested in some Prismacolor markers and tried working on some comic-book style artwork (using references) to stretch my abilities and venture outside my comfort zone. After completing my first ever marker-based portrait (I had sketched the person’s face in pencil and then went over it in marker… only to find that it wasn’t that good of a drawing), I decided to take a realistic photo of a person and attempt to make a caricature of the person as a comic book character.

This didn’t entirely work.

I have 8×10 photos of movie characters and scenes lining the staircase that descends to our basement (AKA my “man cave”). I plucked a picture of Michael J. Fox off the wall and sketched him in pencil and then colored it in with marker. I felt, in the pencil sketch, that I had a pretty good feel for a caricature, but once I layered the color on, it was hard to not want to draw realistically (Here’s a blog with iPhone photos of the progression of it). I enjoy the end result, but it was frustrating that I’m having trouble drawing a cartoon-style portrait naturally…